The Boston Globe reports that Paul R. Shanley, a key figure in the clergy sex abuse scandal that began in Boston and shook the Roman Catholic church worldwide, was released from prison Friday and arrived in the small town of Ware, Mass., walking with a cane and looking frail.
After spending 12 years in state prison for raping a boy in the 1980s, Shanley will now live in a yellow, wood-sided, three-story house that, records show, is already home to four other Level 3 sex offenders — considered the most likely to commit another sexual crime.
Local police said they would step up patrols on Shanley’s street to protect him from harassment and to protect the public from the 86-year-old former priest, who has been accused of abuse by dozens of victims over three decades.
